


Dream a little dream

by wifebeast__s



Series: The classics [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 15:01:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18662743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wifebeast__s/pseuds/wifebeast__s
Summary: Before waking, Clint has a dream. *SPOILERS INCLUDED FOR ENDGAME*





	Dream a little dream

**Author's Note:**

> While I will forever be salty about MCU giving Clint a family (for like a million reasons...the man couldn’t even be a decent husband, how you gonna tell me he’s a father?), this particular fic could be considered MCU canon compliant, though the family is barely mentioned.

_Stars shining bright above you_

There’s light behind his eyelids, but it’s the soft, cool light of an evening event, he knows from years of this sort of thing. The song is nice and softer than the light; it sounds distant, muffled by the clink of glasses or silverware, muttered conversations that he can’t seem to track. 

 _Night breezes seem to whisper ‘I love you_ ’

He opens his eyes, confused, heartbroken, the pain in his chest only sharpening when he feels the memory of her wrist in his hand. Above him is a crystal chandelier, one in a row of them marching into the faded distance, and the place feels familiar to him somehow. He peers down and sees he’s wearing a tuxedo, not the suit he had been wearing there, on the top of the mountain of Vormir. An image flashes before his eyes, a red halo blossoming around Natasha’s head. He squeezes his eyes shut, willing away the vivid picture, before he opens them after a deep inhale to determine where he is.

_Birds singing in a sycamore tree_

It comes back to him in a flood. It’d been so long since this had happened, or at least it felt like it. He had all but forgotten the time in his life before Natasha was in it, before he had her always at his back, at his side. She hadn’t always been there, though. They had been enemies, once upon a time, in what feels like another life entirely. But he knows this place.

Fighting the growing nausea that threatens him, he stands, turning in a slow circle to take in his surroundings, and then there she is, at the bar. The longer he watches, the more his memories come back, feeding this vision, bringing it into sharp focus. She wears the same black dress she wore then, slit up to the thigh that had tested his willpower then and is no less devastating now. There were other people in the room then, he knew, but here they are hazy, ethereal; they were unimportant then, too. 

_Say ‘Nighty Night” and kiss me_

He had approached her slowly, then, convinced that she noticed him and cared not a bit about his approach. He does the same now, heart pounding in his chest, stomach clenched painfully. She was so beautiful. And young then; he had been shocked at how young she was. She had aged so gracefully, he hadn’t even realized it until seeing her again now. Fuck, she looks like something out of one of those damn perfume commercials; she looks, had always looked, timeless, like she could be sitting in a smoke-filled speakeasy in 1920s Chicago or a crooner’s nightclub in the 50s.

The words come to him unbidden, automatic, just as they had that night, “Care for a dance?”

He isn’t ready for her smile. She turns to him, her face so familiar, her smile more genuine now than it was then. She knows him, and she answers differently, too, her voice soft and tender, and shit shit this is so hard. She offers her hand, and he takes it, squeezing it more tightly probably than he should. She feels solid. She feels real and tangible, but she can’t be because she’s sprawled, broken and bloody, on a stone slab somewhere far away from this classy nightclub where he first found her.

_Just hold me tight and tell me you’ll miss me_

She spins into him, as the unseen singer continues in her soft voice. He wraps an arm around her waist, tugging her closer, “Tasha? I thought…”

Her smile shrinks slightly, but she leans forward, arm wrapping around his shoulder until she can lean her chin on the top of it. She gives a hum, letting him lead them slowly on the dance floor. There should be other people here. And it had been a tango, he thought, right? Or was that Montenegro?

“You did it, Clint,” she murmurs into his shoulder.

He thinks that this could be heaven, or it could be hell; he knows which one he deserves, and it’s not the one where she is, surely. She feels real. She feels like she is substantial and living and with him, where she’s supposed to be. He chokes on the words, “No, Nat. You did it.”

Her breath is warm and comforting on his neck. This isn’t real, a voice screams at him in his head. He holds her a little tighter.

“I would do it again,” she whispers, pulling back to look him in the eyes - her own, shining and clear, full of the things that she never said and he never said.

“It cost too much,” he manages to grind out; the words come from somewhere deep in his gut, wrenched from him in something just short of a wretched sob.

_While I’m alone and blue as can be_

She shakes her head, “No. This is what was always going to happen. This is why we were sent here together.”

The sounds are growing fainter. There isn’t as much clinking, and is he imagining that it’s getting just a little darker? Natasha’s hand tightens on his slightly.

_Stars fading, but I linger on dear, still craving your kiss_

“They’ll all come back, Clint. Your family.”

You are my family, he wants to say. Should say. Should have said before. It should have been him. He’s lost enough. And now Nat...

She’s so close. He can smell her distinct scent. She always indulged in expensive soaps, nothing with the sickly synthetic scents that SHIELD had always provided. It was one of the only creature comforts she allowed herself, and she had once let him use it, laughing at the faint, lingering smell of rose oil that followed him for a few hours after.

He leans forward, pressing his forehead to hers, not thinking about those moments before she ripped herself free from his grasp. Before she betrayed him to save him. Before he watched her fall, tears in her eyes and his. It’s ok, she had said to him, smiling as if anything about it was ok, would ever be ok again.

“Don’t do this to me,” he whispers again.

_I’m longing to linger ‘til dawn dear just saying this_

Natasha is looking around, and he thinks that he’s not the only one noticing the fading scenery. When she speaks, it’s rushed, like she has more to say than she has time, and he wants to scream, “Clint. Barton. You saved me.”

She lets him go, and he starts to protest until her hands are framing his face, jerking him up to look into her eyes. They’re so green. They are so open. She’s come such a long way from this moment - this first moment, when she had been lies wrapped in seduction, untrusting and untrustworthy. Now he knows these eyes, can read them, wants desperately to find eternity here.

“You made a different call. You saved me. You saved me.”

He shakes his head because despite all of this, she is still dead on a distant planet, and he is still here. He couldn’t save her. He couldn’t save anyone.

“No, you saved me. You saved everyone, Tasha.”

Her thumbs make a slow circle on the stubble on his cheeks. She smiles, tilts her head in that achingly familiar way.

_Sweet dreams ‘til sunbeams find you_

“You have to go on, Clint. You have to take the stone to the team. To the Avengers. You...you gave me a home. A family. And now I can save them. I can save you. So you go and you beat him.”

He doesn’t remember his hands slipping around her like this. He’s felt the curve of her hips before; they’re partners. He’s seen her naked. He’s had his hands on every part of her body, even some spots that no one should ever see, and those memories make him want to claw his skin off. This is different, he knows.

“I would do it all over again.”

He nods. So would he.

“I don’t regret a moment of it. I don’t regret...anything.” She says it with a firm look, and he knows what she means, but he doesn’t feel so easy with it.

_Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you_

“Tasha. I…”

The sounds of glasses and plates are gone. The lights are out except for one just above them. The singer is in the shadows, her voice echoing, as if coming through an old speaker down a hallway. She is beautiful. She is everything that he knew she could be and more when he met her that night.

“I love you,” he gasps out, the words slipping free from the burning in his chest.

She leans closer to him, hands sliding down his neck, to his chest. He has touched every part of her, and she has touched every part of him, but this is new, and it sparks in his veins.

_But in your dreams, whatever they be_

“I love you,” she breathes against his lips, and the words sound so easy and natural coming from her.

He knows. He always knew. So did she. Wrong time and wrong place. In another universe, maybe, one of the splintered timelines that they were apparently creating, maybe there he had held her like this at another time, not the end of the world, not when she was gone.

He kisses her. Slowly, intimately, in every way he had always feared. And he had been right to because he feels himself breaking at the first contact. His eyes close, and he can taste her, and he can feel her, and his heart beats frantically, trying to escape his chest to be closer to her, he just knows it. This isn’t right - not like this.

Natasha’s fingers wrap in the leather of his uniform - but wait, he had been in a tux. Her grip loosens. Her lips get softer.

“I love you,” she whispers again, eyes open and staring at his, and she’s smiling, but he knows in his bones that she’s sad, if only for him. He is drowning. He is being crushed.

The light above them flickers. It goes out.

He is in a shallow pool of water. He sits up, spinning frantically around. Where is he? Where is Natasha? The mountain that they had climbed isn’t here.

He struggles to stand but can only manage to get himself to his knees. He stares down at the stone. Too much. The cost is too much.

His movements are mechanical, prepping the time machine - a fucking time machine, and she still died; what good is a fucking time machine, then? - for his return. She will be alone here. His breath stutters, searing his lungs, failure weighing heavily. He presses the button.

 _Dream a little dream of me_.

**Author's Note:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXhLF9QkeNI - inspiration


End file.
